Friday, August 2, 2019

Day Eighteen...

All of my healed adult life, I’ve strived to be one thing: a good friend. A friend who listens. A friend who supports. A friend who is there. 

Almost ten years ago, we moved from Virginia to Georgia, and I remember the eerie silence of weekday living. Longing for Sunday when we would gather with others and I could be a friend. 

Eventually, friendship moved beyond the walls of the church and there were coffee dates, walks through the neighborhoods, wine and cookie nights, brunch bunch and eventually girls night out. But it all started from nothing - the pangs of not being known, of no girlfriends to interact with, laugh with.  

For years, my kids have been the bridge to adult friendships. Almost every significant friendship being forged as a result of our kids hanging out, but what happens when the kids are grown and gone and church is no longer a crutch? How do you make friends in a new town where you know absolutely no one? 

...Or am I being stripped of the one thing I pride myself in? Is this an invitation to apartness? Another wilderness journey? Another journey within? 

Or will I look back years from now and mark Day 18 as the day I sat at the coffee shop and sobbed. Trying desperately to hold on to gratitude for all the good things this season is pregnant with and yet feeling so unknown that it feels like a weight. Hiding my sorrow from a partner who knows me so intimately. His hugs trying to shoulder the pain of my aloneness without stepping into co-dependency. I love him for the way he sees me. Though no one person should ever be responsible for carrying the weight of knowing for another.

I find myself in that place once again as I did a decade ago - acclimating to the unknown so I can get used to new ways of knowing. 

What does fear feel like in me? Am I aware of the shape of my fear? It balloons like a child’s soapy bubble filled with the narrative that I may never find women friends. 

Me - introverted, hearing impaired, socially awkward. How and where do I put myself out there? How and where can I show myself a friend in this new place to find friends?

I wake up each day and sit on my mat, committed to loving the moment in front of me. To love this day, this place before I fully know it. I’m here to heal. I’m here to embody. I’m here to transform. I know it, but I don’t yet know the shape of it. And in the unknown, fear plays its fiddle. 

As harrowing as the thought of never making friends is, I just keep holding the yes of this new beginning in my heart with gratitude. This is how love will be formed within me.